Adil Najam
Hassan Abbas from WatanDost just alerted me to this most deplorable and shocking news. According to the Daily Times:
Renowned social worker Abdul Sattar Edhi was interrogated by US immigration officials at the JF Kennedy Airport in New York, who also seized his passport and other documents, a private TV channel reported on Monday. Edhi told Geo News that US immigration officials had questioned him for eight hours at the airport. “They asked me why I don’t reside permanently in the US despite having a green card,” he said. “I told them that I’m a social worker and I have to travel extensively around the world, and so cannot live there permanently,” he added.
Edhi said he had faced the same behaviour from US immigration officials when he visited America in June last year. According to Geo News, the immigration officials allowed him to leave following the intervention of Pakistani officials, but did not return his passport and other documents. Edhi said the US officials, through a letter, had also asked him to appear in court for a hearing on February 20. Separately, talking to News One television channel, Edhi said US authorities apparently wanted to hinder his social work. He said he, his wife and their granddaughter had been living in a small room for the last month as the US authorities were refusing to return his passport.
In an earlier news story, Dawn had reported:
US authorities have threatened Pakistan’s most respected citizen Abdul Sattar Edhi with deportation, he said. “I just received a telephone call from someone, telling me that I am being deported,” Mr Edhi, who is now in New York told Dawn. He said he was stopped at the airport in London when he tried to board a plane for New York on Jan 8.
Mr Edhi then contacted the US Embassy in London who gave him a letter which allowed him to proceed to New York. The letter also advised him to see US authorities on Feb 18 to clear whatever misunderstandings they may have about him. Mr Edhi arrived in New York on Jan 9 and was detained at the airport for eight hours. “They were questioning me why I look the way I look,” said Mr Edhi who has a long beard and always wears traditional Pakistani dress along with a traditional cap.
“They also wanted to know why I visit the United States so regularly,” he said. “I told them I am a social worker. What else I do? I only do social work,” said Mr Edhi who has branches of his trust in several US cities. “If they do not let me work here, I will work somewhere else.”
ATP know of my reveration - aqeedat - for the amazing humanitarian work that Abdul Sattar Edhi does (also see here, here and here).
Indeed, this admiration is shared not only by many other Pakistanis but by so many around the world who follow daily miracles that Edhi Foundation performs in some of the most telling places in the world. A look at the over 250 comments on my post about him which suggested that he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is testimony to this admiration, indeed devotion.
Here are excerpts from what I had written then; events since then have again highlighted just how important a human treasure he is not just to Pakistan but to the world:
Here is a man who has dedicated his whole life to serving the most marginalized and the most wretched in society. The destitutes, the mentally ill, corpses left by the roadside, children abandoned at his doorsteps, women kicked out by their families. When there is no one to go to, there is always Edhi Sahib to go to.
As importantly, he has done this - in his words - ‘wholesale’. He has single handedly built - literally by begging - a social services structure at a national scale. Bigger than what governments have. He has never taken a ruppee as salary himself. He lives in a two room apartment that most middle class Pakistanis would not call home and he oversees the largest ambulance network in the world, now with airplanes and helicopters, a multi-million dollar enterprise of relief, of goodwill, and of humanitarianism. If he does not deserve the Nobel Award, I do not know who does.
The Nobel Peace Prize has not come yet. But this humiliation has. Deplorable.
@ How about Geo TV’s Bhands and Mirassis ?
have they spoken about this disgusting news
on Edhi or they keep silence as usual, American
synthetic donkeys.
There is no need to get emotional about it. Let us look at this incident objectively bearing following points in mind:
1. There is no doubt Edhi is the greatest philanthropist of Pakistan and well known here.
2. It does not mean Edhi will be equally well known in America.
3. In America there are hundreds of philanthropists who give away in charity billions of dollars.
4. Knowledge of an average American about a third world country’s history and geography is quite understandably poor.
5. What happened in America on 9/11 they have to take all kind of precautionary measures to protect themselves from repetition of a similar incident.
6. The precautionary measures adopted by them are bound to cause some inconvenience to people travelling to America and to their own citizen living in America.
7. There is rule of law in America unlike our own country. Whatever the law, good or bad, will be applicable to all, rich or poor, big or small without discrimination. Just because Edhi is a great man does not mean he will be above the law.
9. Green Card is a previlage which America so genrously grants people of other countries. It has every right to see this previlage is not misused.
10. I am not sure if their checking is random or involves some profiling. They deny profiling. I would say they would be quite justified if they do some profiling. After all it can’t be denied that a large number of terrorists are operating in and from Pakistan and all terrorists happen to be Muslims though all Muslims are not terrorists.
11. We are raising such an hue and cry over this matter as if we are the champion of human rights.
In the end I would just say that it indeed saddened me to see what happened to a person like Edhi but I do not blame America for it. I blame ourselves for it.
@RJ
Mr. Edhi visits U.S. frequently and has many Edhi Foundation offices there. His Green Card has NOT lapsed. His only crime is his “looks” (the beard, topi and all). Many other famous Muslims luminaries – including Malaysian PM Abdullah Ahmad Badawi were mete out such “third-degree” at the U.S. airport. But Edhi’s good reputation exceed even some of the Nobel laureates and is well known throughout the world.
It is definitely very unfortunate to see a person like Mr. Edhi go through all this. Earlier this year, it took me 4 hours (carrying green passport) at JFK to get through Border Control and Home Land Security, while my wife (carrying red passport) breezed through immigration.
I missed my connection and was treated as if I was a suspect in a major investigation or some sort of federal crime. It is a horrible experience to enter the US on a green passport esp. if you are a young male muslim. I even saw some Pakistani-Americans (blue passport holders) getting treated the same way.
The reasons why America is able to humiliate Maulana Edhi are as follows:
1. Pakistan is ruled by a neo-colonial puppet instead of a democratically elected leader who exhorts his masters in London and Washington to emulate his example in massacring Muslims
2. In his current visit to London Pervez Musharraf also encouraged the British government to ban legal non-violent Muslim organisations and treat Muslims as third-class citizens.
3. Since Pakistan’s leadership is not only servile and obsequious to London and Washington but also unrepresentative, nobody cares what Pervert Musharraf and the rest of Pakistan have to say in any case.
4. Pervez Musharraf is too busy seeking asylum in Israel: a country, which will sooner or later be wiped off the map
5. America’s Christian majority and the thousands of one-eyed and one-legged “veterans” have obviously learnt nothing from Iraq and Afghanistan since they still entrust Zionists like Michael Chertoff with their national security who are out to destroy America.
6. America’s public humiliation of Sattar Edhi demonstrates the Zionists’ contempt for their colony called Pakistan—if a third-class immigration official can humiliate the kindest and most illustrious of Pakistanis it speaks volumes of what America thinks of the rest of Pakistan….
This is a sad news but not shocking. We all know the behavior of American Immigration and their senseless and rude attitude. One thing that I might miss or want to ask (if some one know) did he really violate any immigration law; or it’s just blunt arrogance from US immigration?
US has humiliated so many prominent and non-prominent Muslims w/o US passport on her ports, thats not new news.
But why do these prominent Muslims subject themselves to such humiliation, with advance knowledge of bad behavior of DHS officials, degrading interviews, long airport detentions, deportations. I don’t get it.
“They were questioning me why I look the way I look,” said Mr Edhi who has a long beard and always wears traditional Pakistani dress along with a traditional cap.
That’s what I mean by “The growing Islamic bogeyman syndrome”.
But we had it coming: Some of us try to be more American than the gringos. Some Pakistani-Americans in their zeal to prove their Americanism go to the same extreme in perpetrating hatred against those that look like Mr. Edhi by their bigotry. Some among us have been denigrating our heritage and religion just to prove our patriotism to American passport or Green Card or to be accepted as the “in-crowd”. Our fear of reprisal and guilt-by-association should not be such that we go over-board in making offensive comments about Islamic diversity and schools of thought.
Ironically, these “more American than the gringos” may themselves be the victims of racial profiling – because they are not after all more American than the gringos – they don’t have the right color of eyes, name, etc.
Deploring and working to eradicate terrorism is good. But what should be great that it should be done with justice. And justice would mean not to rush to quick judgment. This goes not just for the U.S. immigration and law enforcement authorities – but also for many amongst us!